Friday, November 12, 2010

Starting a blog instead of writing a paper

I've decided to start a blog... I've contemplated it before, and I knew it would be a good idea for my travels to the Czech Republic and back through Europe. Tonight I should be continuing work on a couple of papers and be researching like mad... but my brain is so full of all this information that it is hard to focus on one thing long enough to actually get anything accomplished. One of the papers I am working on is for my Introduction to Women's Studies class I am required to take for my minor in Women's and Gender Studies. I have decided to write this paper about an excerpt from Margaret Sanger's "Woman and the New Race". I really wanted to share this introduction to the excerpt:


"Margaret Sanger (1883-1966) dedicated her book, Woman and the New Race, to the memory of her mother "who gave birth to eleven living children" and who died at the age of forty-eight. In her work ans a public health nurse, Margaret Sanger witnessed first-hand the disastrous economic and physical effects on poor women and their families of uncontrolled fertility. It became her life's mission to give every woman the right "to control her own body.""


Reading things like this reminds me how privileged I am, and why I study what I do. It still amazes me how much women have fought, and continue to fight, to have control of their own bodies. It is true that today, in the United States at least, the majority of women have access to birth control and ideas about motherhood have shifted and women do have more of a choice. However, women do not have control over their bodies in many ways even today. The media is one such place that I see women continually objectified to what society calls for in a woman. And then my friend posted this on Facebook: "Oh America, why is it ok to dismember a woman on prime time TV but ample cleavage on a living, breathing woman is not? Just wondering." I wonder the same thing, Dita Von Teese." It just makes me think... why is it that women are subjected to this kind of treatment? I have read plenty of theories of nature vs. culture and that the gender division is a social construction that continues to be reproduced so that we are continually caught in a vicious circle... But I really want to see an end to it. I do not feel the effects of this day to day, and I am very fortunate for that. But women in all walks of life face adversity because of their sex every day, and it still doesn't make sense to me.


So, I guess that is why I study what I do. At times it feels hopeless, but women like Margaret Sanger remind me that women are invincible. I hope that in my life I can try to make a difference for my fellow women, or that I can witness an improvement in our lives. I really don't think it's wishful thinking. As Sanger said, women must take matters into their own hands and demand the rights they deserve.


Nice first post, huh? This is the way my brain is working these days as I am so entrenched with writing and researching with 5 weeks left in the semester. I'm sure I will write about theories and representations of post communist Eastern Europe very soon... Maybe, if anything, this blog can help me write my papers. Now that's what I call productive procrastination!